Why is he like that?
by Lady Krista
Summary: Summary: Paul Bartalet from Carnival! didn’t become a bitter, empty man all in a day. What on earth could have happened to make him that way? P.S. This is good to read either before or after you see the play… but alone it’s going to be kinda depress
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Paul Bartalet from Carnival! didn't become a bitter, empty man all in a day. What on earth could have happened to make him that way? P.S. This would be good to read either before or after you see the play... but alone it's going to be kinda depressing.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Paul or any other characters from the play Carnival!, the movie Lili, or the book Love of Seven Dolls, all of which are likely to show up in this story. They belong to their respective creators; I'm just playing around and trying to understand them. Anyone that's an original is mine, however.  
  
Paul grinned as the applause washed over him, following him even to the door of his dressing room. He dripped sweat and every muscle ached, but he had never been happier in his life. His first night as a lead in the Ballet de Paris had been a resounding success. He threw a grin at the stage manager, who grinned back kindly. In this moment of triumph, it didn't seem to matter that he was only a sixteen-year-old orphan from the gutter. All that mattered was the music and the dancing, and the applause.  
At 16, he was the youngest dancer in the troupe, though not by much. His partner Catrine, the Prima Ballerina, was only a few years his senior at 18. He looked up to her as something of an older sister, a sage giver of advice. It was she who had seen him in the corps de ballet, and asked the manager to give him a trial as a lead. Thanks to her, he would soon have money to hire a small flat in a nice building instead of staying each night in a hotel room with a few other men, drawing lots for the bed, and the warmest corners.  
Yes, there was much to be proud of and thankful for tonight, he thought as he dried his damp body with a towel, while changing into street clothes. He could not believe how far he had come from the dives where he had danced in a corner, hoping for the drunks to toss a few francs at him. He grinned again, thinking that no one would believe the lithe young dancer of today was the same as that pitiful wretch, and tossing is things into a small valise. In a habit that was a mixture of superstition and common sense, he stripped the dressing room of all his own things, leaving only bits of costume for the night. He checked one last time, and picking up his valise, he left.  
He splurged his first bit of salary on a private room in a cheap hotel, feeling that he deserved it after all the work he'd done to get where he was. He fell into the hard bed as a drowning man onto the sand, and slept like a rock.  
The next night's performance was much the same, and he was in high spirits, for he had begun to look for a small room or flat to call home, and to think of collecting belongings besides his ballet shoes and valise. Thus engaged in thought, he emerged from the stage door and ran directly into Catrine, who was rebuffing the advances of a powerful-looking man who had her by the wrist. Expecting this interruption, the man loosened his grip for a moment, allowing her to escape. She fled as far as the narrow alleyway, thus blocked my two men, allowed her, leaving Paul face-to-face with the brute. Without thinking, he reacted to the affront of the man's attack on his partner. His legs, strengthened by the lifts and turns of his art form, were savage weapons with which he bludgeoned the man, who had no time to react. First Paul's left, and then his right leg connected with the man's head, causing him to slump to the ground, unconscious.  
Catrine, both shocked and honored by his heroics, remained leaning against the gritty wall where she had fled, staring at him. He turned to her and smiled. "Are you all right?" He enquired gently.  
"Yes," came her soft answer, "you came just at the right moment." She grinned up at him to show that she was unharmed, and held out her hand. "Come. I am a lady who knows how to treat a hero." He smiled back, and taking her hand, he stepped over the large man upon the ground and followed her.  
She led him to a small bistro a few blocks away, and they sat outside in the August breeze, drinking beer and eating little meat pastries. He had never had such a delicious meal in his life, but it was overshadowed by the lovely girl beside him, who seemed finally to see him as a man, not merely as a dance partner. For the first time, she looked into his eyes as she spoke his name, and he thought he had never heard such music as her voice. They spoke softly together of inconsequential things: her family, the ridiculousness of the latest fashions of the rich, the other cast members, but not of their own dancing, as if by unspoken agreement leaving their work behind them. When the bistro closed at midnight, she led him to a noisy café on the waterfront, where they danced- not as they were accustomed to, but as the rest of the world danced- in a rowdy crowd, their arms around each other.  
At 4 am, having consumed rather a lot of beer in the thirst worked up by dancing, they were pushed out again onto the pavement, where hey stood several minutes just looking at each other, smiling and wondering what to do next. 


	2. Chapter 2

Paul looked at the lovely woman beside him, and bowed exaggeratedly. "May I walk you home, Mademoiselle?" he asked.  
She giggled drunkenly. "Your home or mine?" she asked, with a mischievous grin.  
Paul was momentarily shocked at such a blatant offer from Catrine, whom he had thought to be a girl of morals. Seeing the shock pass across his face, she giggled again.  
"Do you think I'm serious, Paul? For goodness sake, I'm not a tramp! Don't you know a joke when you hear one?"  
But this speech sounded rather contrived to Paul, whose upbringing had not left him with much humor about the selling of a woman's body. He forced a grin, and taking her hand, he began to walk up the street. Catrine frowned at his back, but followed quietly enough, allowing him to take her back to the flat she shared with her 2 sisters. He left her on the doorstep without another word, and went off to find his own shelter for the remainder of the night.  
They met again the next afternoon on the stage, she as the fairy princess, he as her prince. When he looked at her this way, dripping with illusion, she was quite appealing, he thought. Perhaps if he could think of her this way, her 'jokes' would be easier to stomach. He decided to ask her out again that night, for he was unhappy with the way last night had ended. He debated whether to tell her why her joke had cut him so, and what she would think of him afterwards. He had not yet come to a decision when he was called to the stage.  
  
They gave two performances that day, as it was Saturday, and he caught her offstage between them. He squeezed her hand as she passed by him to her dressing room, and she stopped, looking up at him. He stared at her for several second, tongue-tied, for in her stage makeup she was even more stunning than she had been the night before.  
  
"I-I'm sorry about last night," he stammered, "I would like to make it up to you. Can you go out again?"  
  
Catrine smiled. "I would love to, Paul. I'll meet you outside the stage door again tonight." Paul grinned at her, and rushed off to his dressing room to prepare for the evening performance.  
  
As soon as the last bow had been taken, they both rushed offstage into their dressing rooms as eagerly as children. Paul's valise was lighter today, as he had found a small room to hire that very morning. He strode quickly to the stage door, and found her just arriving as well. Without a word, he took her hand and they walked along for a few minutes. He led her to a quiet café and took a table in the corner. They ordered the spiced beef that was the specialty of the house, and Paul decided that it was now or never.  
  
"Catrine," he began, unsure of himself, "I didn't mean to be unpleasant to you last night. You see my... my mother was a ...tramp, as you call it." He lowered his head in shame, waiting for her rejection. There was no sound from her side of the table, and he looked up to find her staring at him with an expression of great concern and sympathy on her face, her hand over her mouth, and her eyes filled with unshed tears.  
  
"I... I didn't know, Paul," she said hoarsely. "I'm so sorry! I would never have joked so if I had known!"  
  
Paul found himself comforting her. "It's ok, Catrine, it doesn't matter now" he murmured, reaching across the table to take her hand. "I'm never going back to that world, now that I am a dancer." In a tiny whisper, he added, "And now that I have you." 


	3. Chapter 3

From then on, the two were nearly inseparable. She slowly pried his life's story out of him, from his earliest memories of being lulled to sleep by the creak of bedsprings as his mother plied her trade, to her death when he was 8, to the lucky break of finding a teacher of dance who took him on in exchange for the chores the boy could do, and ending with his despair when his mentor had died. Catrine's compassion was sometimes too much for him to bear, and he would leave her at the stage door sometimes, when the look in her eyes overpowered him. He would always apologize, though he never explained, and in an odd way, she understood.  
  
Being young, they had much energy for being with each other, and no week would pass without them dancing until long past midnight at least one night. He, though well aware of that which went on between a woman and a man, still was a bit shy, for Catrine was a girl of good family, and he had, for her, embraced a kind of respectability. And so, he was rather taken aback one night in September when she ended a gay polka they were dancing with a kiss.  
  
She had decided that he needed to be awoken to her as a woman (not just as a sister, as he had once perceived her), and expected him to respond as ardently as any young man. When instead he pulled his head back and stared at her as if she had taken leave of her senses, she was insulted. She wrenched herself from his arms and whirled on her heel, heading for the door. He caught up with her just outside and grabbed her wrist.  
  
She whirled again to face him, fury held tightly to keep out the pain of rejection. "What?" she shouted at him, trying to be heard over the music and noise still pouring from the café.  
  
He stared at her, not certain of what to say, but sure that he could not let her leave this way. Her gaze dropped to her wrist, held in a loose but unbreakable grip. His gaze followed, and he remembered the last time he had seen her wrist this way. A small voice asked him if the man he had knocked out had gripped her thus for similar reasons. He ignored the voice.  
  
He swallowed, finding his voice. "What was that for?" he asked inanely.  
  
She scowled at him. "What is a kiss normally for? But I see now that you don't want to be kissed by me." She lifted her hand. "Now, if you'll just let me go, I'll be on my way and bother you no more."  
  
"Catrine! I...I didn't think..." He trailed off, not knowing the words to express his feelings.  
  
Her hard gaze continued to bore into him, but he didn't notice. It suddenly dawned on him that she saw him as more than a partner, a brother... but as a man.  
  
Catrine, meanwhile, was beginning to lose her fury, and wanted to go where she could brood alone. "Paul, let go of me! I don't care what you thought or didn't think- I want to go ho-"  
  
He pulled her to him and laid his lips gently over hers, cutting off the flow of words. Her slender body pressed to his stirred things in him he had never expected to feel- tenderness and protectiveness- along with the familiar lust.  
  
Her hands twined around his neck as she ardently responded, and he groaned softly, pleased with her response. His hands stroked her back, but returned to her shoulders, softly breaking the kiss, for he knew he could not take advantage of such an innocent response.  
  
She looked up at him dreamily, and he had a fleeting moment of temptation to carry her off to his one-room flat. But that vanished as he thought of the sagging bed, the mended curtains, the threadbare rug. His ardor, instantly cooled by the thought of her reaction to the squalor in which he lived, would not come back easily, and he knew that it was now time to escort her home. Releasing her from his arms, he retained her hand and they began to stroll down the street in companionable silence. They spoke not a word until they reached her front door, where she turned to him.  
  
"Paul," she pronounced solemnly, "I believe we have gone as far I this relationship as I can allow, knowing your youth. Also, I am afraid I cannot see as much of you as I have been, for people have begun to talk in the ballet, and if such things reach the ears of the manager, he is sure to be livid." She looked up at him, pleading with her eyes that he understand. "We could both be fired for it."  
  
Paul nodded, suddenly aware of the early autumn chill in the air. He understood such things to be the way of the ballet, for the tempers of artistes were very seldom suited to each other, and love affairs gone sour could ruin a show. Still, the thought of seeing less of her, even as he had begun to hope to see more, was a blow to him. He nodded again, and turned from her, and walked away to whatever rest he might find in his own small room. 


End file.
